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Friday 22 September 2023
Welcome to the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, Fourth Edition. Some sample entries appear below. Click here for the Introduction; here for the masthead; here for Acknowledgments; here for the FAQ; here for advice on citations. Find entries via the search box above (more details here) or browse the menu categories in the grey bar at the top of this page.
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Schaffer, Gene
(1941- ) US author in whose sf novel, Countdown to Doomsday (1982), Aliens direct a remote-control satellite to Earth, where it emits a Ray that makes all women infertile; the purpose is eventually to clear the planet of humans. [JC]
Predator
Film (1987). Amercent/American Entertainment/Twentieth Century Fox. Directed by John McTiernan. Written by Jim Thomas, John Thomas. Cast includes Elpidia Carrillo, Bill Duke, Kevin Peter Hall, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Carl Weathers. 106 minutes. Colour. / A special-forces group undertaking a commando-style rescue mission in South America clashes bloodily with guerrillas and then very much more bloodily with the Predator: an intelligent Alien (Hall) that ...
Sem-Sandberg, Steve
(1958- ) Norwegian-born journalist, translator and author, in Sweden from childhood; his first two novels – Sländornas värld ["The World of Dragonflies"] (1976), an ironized Space Opera whose protagonist must persuade inhabitants of a colonized planet (see Colonization of Other Worlds) to return to the cold embrace of Terra, and the similar ...
Noto, Cosimo
(circa 1871-? ) Italian physician and author, in the US from about 1898 and practicing as a doctor in New Orleans from 1899, alive in 1914; his Utopia, The Ideal City (1903), carries a doctor and his interlocutor from the present-day city to the New Orleans of 1953, which has been transformed on socialist lines deeply influenced by the work of Edward Bellamy. The heart of the book comprises ...
Cicero
(106-43 BCE) Marcus Tullius Cicero, celebrated Roman orator and author of many works. He is included here for his interplanetary fable Somnium Scipionis ["The Dream of Scipio"] which is part of his De re publica ["On the Republic"] (51 BCE). In this terse but suggestive text the historical figure Publius Cornelius Scipio Aemilianus is taken by the spirit of his adoptive grandfather, the famous Scipio Africanus, up through the planetary spheres of a Ptolemaic solar system. ...
Langford, David
(1953- ) UK author, critic, editor, publisher and sf fan, in the latter capacity recipient of 21 Hugo awards for fan writing – some of the best of his several hundred pieces are assembled as Let's Hear It for the Deaf Man (coll 1992 chap US; much exp vt The Silence of the Langford 1996; exp 2015 ebook) as Dave Langford, edited by Ben Yalow – plus five Best Fanzine Hugos ...